Now with extra Greek!

There’s heaps that’s changed this time around.

Biggest news: Greek.

The full functionality of the Hebrew system has now been duplicated in Koine (NT) Greek. Full tables of the regular verb קטל, plus extensive data for a good number of irregular verbs. The parsing tool works for Greek, and tables of the article, nouns (all declensions), pronouns, vowel/consonant contractions, and verbal aspect all come too.

Some relatively minor changes have made it into the Hebrew side:

• You can now change the nomenclature from Qatal/Yiqtol/Wayyiqtol to the more traditional Perfect/Imperfect/Waw Preterite.
• Saving whilst creating new paradigms/entries has been properly disabled (finally), avoiding data loss. This also applies to the Greek editor.

To get the new version, download it (1.0.1, 3.5 MB zipped .app file), or hit Check for updates in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

I’ve upgraded the Sparkle updater system, to fix a couple of things. Firstly there were a few bugs that could cause crashes if it couldn’t find the update information feed properly, but secondly there was a change in how .zip files were extracted in between the last couple of updates.

This means that the auto-updater might not work exactly as you think it should this time around. It may well download, then crash out of the updater, complaining of an error in extracting the file.

This sucks slightly, but it’s easy to get around. Just download the file yourself, extract it, and you’re up and running again. Ideally, this will be an isolated occurrence.

The only other thing I’ve changed with Paradigmatic is altering the web links within the program (under the ‘Help’ menu, for example).

To get the new version, download it (0.6.1, 2.3 MB zipped .app file), or hit ‘Check for updates’ in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

The first thing you’ll notice as you fire it up is that I’ve changed the main window to look a little nicer:

Note I’ve removed the greyed-out ‘Tester’ option, as I’ve not written it yet. It will return when there’s something to connect the button to.

The new ‘Grammar Aids’ option is a collection of grammar tables, including noun declension patterns, segholate patterns, pronominal suffixes, the strong verb ‘ant magic’ table, and a summary of irregular verb prefixes. Below is the noun patterns table to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

These tables are all static (i.e. they’re for reference, not interaction), but will hopefully be handy in certain cases. The ‘ant magic’ is something that I never really got into, but a bunch of others in my 1st year Hebrew class found really handy for working out vowel changes in different stems. It got the name from the similarity of the page to a bunch of ants wandering around some Hebrew consonants… that, and the fact that the author’s name is Anthony Kerr.

I’ve also put in a decent help book, that will at least answer some very basic questions on how to use this program.

I’ve changed the Sparkle updater over to the most recent version, which corrects a couple of bugs with updating, particularly related to not having an internet connection.

Finally, one minor database update of note is that I’ve corrected the Hollow ???? Yiqtol 2fp/3fp forms.

To get the new version, download it (0.6.0, 2.3 MB zipped .app file), or hit ‘Check for updates’ in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

• I-Guttural Niphal 1cs Yiqtol/Wayyiqtol
• I-Guttural (stative) Qal 2ms Imperative
• Geminate Niphal 3ms/2fp/1cp Qatal

It’s also a universal binary.

Thanks to Bathgate, Bek, Chris, and Rick for error checking.

To get the new version, download it (0.5.2, 2.0 MB zipped .app file), or hit ‘Check for updates’ in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

 http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

A few paradigms were corrected, most notably the polel yiqtol of ??, which was just plain wrong. Also I’ve fixed a bug in the parsing window, in which a certain order of operations would make certain options unavailable. If you’ve not noticed, then rest easy.

Thanks to Bek, Chris, and Bathgate for error checking.

It’s worth noting that on Leopard Systems, drop-down sheets appear to function differently, and don’t work properly in Paradigmatic. This means that the Editor functionality won’t work if you’ve got OS X 10.5 installed. I’m sorry, but I can’t promise I’ll have this fixed any time soon (unless someone wants to sponsor development by buying me a copy of Leopard… ).

To get the new version, download it (0.5.1, 2.0 MB zipped .app file), or hit ‘Check for updates’ in the Paradigmatic menu bar. If you like, see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

 http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

I’ve gone up a whole point this time (from 0.4 to 0.5) as I’ve added in an auto-updating framework, so from now on you should get an seamless upgrade experience. Sparkle, written by Andy Matuschak, is the thing that does the magic. Hopefully it works well.

The other thing that is really worth upgrading for is the data – I’ve done some extensive revision of the data entries, using a different text book and set of paradigms, and made a reasonable amount of changes. There should only be sporadic errors from now on.

There are currently two known major issues:

• Firstly, if you do a manual check for updates (from the Paradigmatic menu) and you have no internet connection, the ‘checking for updates’ screen will hang indefinitely. Not ideal. This is not my problem, it’s Sparkle’s, and as soon as it’s fixed I’ll push out a new update. If it happens to you, just quit and restart. It doesn’t happen on automatic (background) checks.
• Secondly, if you try and save when you’re either adding a paradigm or editing an entry in the Editor screen (two tasks that almost no-one will do on a regular basis), then sometimes you will get data corruption. Same solution – quit and restart. Any unsaved changes, unfortunately, will be lost. This is a significant issue, and I’m working on it, but as I say almost no-one will know the difference. This exists in previous version of the app too, by the way.

Hope it works out for you. 2nd- and 3rd-year MTC students should find that the parsing tool works ok for their purposes, at least before the exam.

As usual, So, download the latest version (0.5.0, 2.0 MB), see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

There is now a parsing tool, which works how you might (hopefully) expect. Select an irregularity or root, and the types of stems/aspects you want to test, and you will be presented with a randomised set.

Match up the categories to the given word, and you will either get it correct, or your mistakes will be highlighted. Ruthless; hopefully effective.

As yet there is no tracking of how you perform, no difficulty ratings, no progressive training. Maybe later.

Furthermore, the paradigm selection is now pretty much complete, including polel/polal/hithpolal forms for ???, Qal ???, and available Hishtaphel forms of ???.

So, download the latest version (0.4.0, 2.8 MB), see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

Also, I’ve updated the mechanism that updates the data store. Those of you who had problems with not being able to see any data at all should (hopefully) have problems no more.

Finally, in the viewer I’ve changed the way the data populates in the drop-down buttons. The roots are sorted by irregularity, and the stems/aspects fill out according to available paradigms. That means that you can’t try and view a ??? Hiphil Passive Participle, for example, because it doesn’t exist.

Anyway, download the latest version (0.3.2, 2.3 MB), see the full notes, or read the FAQ.

One last thing. To keep updated about any posts related to Paradigmatic, subscribe to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradigmatic

If you’re using this thing, let me know bugs, errors, etc., at paradigmatic@freney.org

Ta.

A full list of what’s changed can be found at http://paradigmatic.freney.org/download.html

The paradigm data entered so far covers all the standard paradigms (all stems, for both ??? and ???, depending on your preference), plus all I-guttural and I-aleph forms. Isolated other paradigms exist, but don’t count on it.

If you try it, please let me know what works, what doesn’t. Let me know any mistakes I’ve made in paradigms (some I’ve had to make educated guesses for) – you can edit them yourself, but unless I’ve got it right at my end the next time you update the program it will overwrite your changes. This is something I may change in the future, but it’s hard to do gracefully, so I’m putting it off for when I have a little more time. Tell me if something doesn’t quite work how you think it ought to work.

Hope it’s useful for someone (other than me, that is).